Go Back To The Emergency Room To Manage Pain? Part 1

I will let you down
I will make you hurt
-- Nine Inch Nails

I live in a metro area with millions of people and "consume" most of my healthcare from probably the largest, best-known, and most-acclaimed/awarded healthcare company in the area. If I need to see a specialist, there are usually several to choose from within easy driving distance and a single phone number to make an appointment with any of them.

A while ago on a Saturday I did something (moved furniture for a few minutes) that gave me all sorts of arm pain. After a couple nights of restless sleep due to OTC painkillers not helping enough, I went to the main Emergency Room, technically Emergency Department (ED), of the aforementioned company early Monday morning. After all, I had no idea what sort of specialist I needed and the pain combined with lack of sleep was not doing my anxiety/depression any favors so waiting for my general (primary care) doctor's office to open did not seem wise as they could be swamped with patients on Mondays. [Mental note: avoid moving furniture on weekends.]

I had a surprisingly positive experience in the ED -- great staff, smart nurses, pleasant doctor who determined I probably had pinched a nerve (doctor was sympathetic to the fact that doctors trigger my anxiety), and several drugs to address pain/inflammation. Long story short, after a couple days my symptoms improved a bit but I needed an orthopedic specialist, for the first time in my life I might add (first time for a pinched nerve, too).

Not being an established patient with any orthopedic doctor, I did not get preferential treatment in scheduling and the first available appointment was 6 days away (but I could keep calling back to see if any openings were created through other patients' cancellations). Besides having to miss a performance that weekend that I had already paid money for (since my pain would not let me enjoy said performance), the major issue was the painkiller prescribed by the ED doctor that was most beneficial was a narcotic and was going to run out before my orthopedic doctor appointment.

Another long story short, my options became:

1. Do nothing, run out of prescribed narcotic, and hope for the best using OTC painkillers until my appointment with a specialist (exacerbating my anxiety/depression to possibly dangerous levels)
2. Keep calling appointments phone number to see if any orthopedic doctor had an opening (and explaining my decades-long experience with depression, maybe even attempting to get squeezed into an earlier appointment by exaggerating and claiming the situation was pushing me toward being actively suicidal)
3. Return to an ED to ask for some sort of painkiller, probably the same narcotic
4. Visit my general doctor to ask for some sort of painkiller, probably a narcotic

What would you do knowing that, at least in the USA, asking for narcotics multiple times (or from multiple doctors) is a "drug-seeking" behavior of some addicts and might reasonably be expected to raise red flags in multiple layers of the healthcare system? Look for what I did in Part 2.